


Somewhere Softer

by Dragonflies_and_Katydids



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Antivan Crow Training, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 12:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12109077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonflies_and_Katydids/pseuds/Dragonflies_and_Katydids
Summary: The Crows have broken him so many times, it hardly hurts at all anymore.





	Somewhere Softer

**Author's Note:**

> "depression"
> 
> rakes the night sky of its stars, keeps them as leverage, as bulb-less lamps  
> in the basement of me. i am alive if alive means to be a moth caught in the  
> hands of some childish grief. shake me to see if i am still breathing. burn  
> my wings if i'm not
> 
> confession: the want to die is not always the want not to live, but sometimes  
> the want to live somewhere softer. where the tall grass lulls my body to sleep  
> where everything promises to stay alive
> 
> Donte Collins
> 
> ******************************************
> 
> Basically, this story exists because reading this poem felt like getting punched. So I'm doing my best to share.

The first time the Crows break him, he's been part of House Arainai for three days.

Later, he remembers very little. It's a handful of fragmented moments, blood on stone and dispassionate voices and cool water trickling into his mouth to ease his throat. It's a haze of pain and humiliation and relief, and the desperate need to understand what they want so he can give it to them.

It's almost two years before they break him again, and at first he thinks it's a punishment. He apologizes for everything he can think of: for rolling his eyes at one of the Masters when she wasn't looking, for the time two weeks ago when he didn't clean his knives properly, for rushing through yesterday's chores to give himself more time to practice flips. He apologizes for every possible sin, begs and whispers and screams until his throat is scraped raw. It gains him nothing but a few sips of water to restore his voice so he can scream again.

By the fourth time they break him, he understands that this is no different than any other training. They want to take him apart so they can put him back together. They want to turn a boy into a Crow, and to do that, they have to know what parts of the boy to keep and what parts to leave behind. Each skill he learns, each memory he makes: everything has to fit into the pattern they've drawn for him. Sometimes that process is more painful than other times.

* * *

Each recovery is easier and each breaking hurts less, until Rinna's death hardly hurts at all. He looks at her body and feels a faint echo of the pain and humiliation of that first breaking, but Taliesin is his relief, a cup of water to bring him back.

Only later, when the Masters explain and dismiss their lies in the same breath, does Zevran remember that water isn't a relief; water is a pause for breath before the pain begins again. They give him water so he lasts a little longer, but they have never been concerned with his survival.

Now, listening to them lay everything out, something inside Zevran gives way into emptiness. There's no pain this time, no struggle to pull the pieces of himself back together. There's only silence and perfect clarity.

He briefly considers attacking the nearest Master and allowing himself to be cut down, then discards that plan in favor of another. They've finally broken him so many times that there's nothing left to break, but he won't give them the satisfaction of knowing they've succeeded. Better to wait for the right contract, one that will take him far from Antiva to a target he can't hope to defeat. Someone who will see him simply as a threat, rather than a puzzle to be reassembled.

Someone who will break him and let the pieces lie, so he can't ever be broken again.

**Author's Note:**

> [on tumblr](https://dragonflies-and-katydids.tumblr.com/post/165406420612/somewhere-softer-dragonfliesandkatydids)


End file.
